117
“For the Register. DAVID HUME,” Christian Register, vol. 26, no. 35 (28 August 1847), p. 137.
“H.G.E.”
For a full review of Burton’s Life and Writings of David Hume, see selection #115. On the Christian Register, see selection #116. For more on Hume’s reception in France, see Laurence L. Bongie, David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-Revolution (1965; second edition Indianapolis, 2000).
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For the Register.
DAVID HUME.
The recent comprehensive life of Hume, by J. H. Burton, Esq., Advocate, leaves a more favorable impression of the philosopher than is entertained by the religious world. He was naturally amiable, humane, kindly, generous, cheerful, easily contented, easily appeased and forgetful of injuries. He possessed all the virtues belonging to health; competence, the possession of fame and all social enjoyments. Natural cheerfulness aided by varied and unbroken prosperity, made him less feel the need of the consolations of religion, as moderate passions, he thought, allowed him to forego its restrainments. He was preeminently the philosopher in temperament, and no one ever carried out the character more consistently through a long life and tedious illness to the last breath. His mistake was in overlooking that the mass of men are not constituted like him. Yet he was not irreligious, so much as sceptical; and sceptical not more about religion than about morals and metaphysics and all human inquiries. He was a universal doubter; or rather his philosophy was. He taught men to hesitate and feel uncertain about every thing and never come to a conclusion, while he often professed that he did not himself differ in believe from other people so much as they thought. He delighted, as a matter of taste and amusement, in sceptical speculations for the exercise of ingenuity and metaphysical acumen. This his friends called his passion for intellectual ropedancing. It was a fatal fault, for which many other minds have paid the penalty in unhappiness, if he escaped.
But let us do him justice. Tho’ not only doubtful himself, but sill more the cause of doubt in others, he was not the monster fanaticism has represented him. He meant his speculations for studious philosophers. He carefully abstained from obtruding them into mixed society. His intimate associates were clergymen. He was a favorite with ladies, young and old, who never in his presence stood in dread of encountering any sentiment that might shock their feelings. Moreover, parents were not afraid to trust their children to his care and social attentions; and thought it a high privilege to obtain them. — Both constitution and benevolence would have prevented his being a propagandist. “Indeed, he seems ever to have felt that a firm faith in Christianity, unshaken by any doubts, was an invaluable privilege, of which it would be as much more cruel to deprive a fellow creature than to rob him of his purse, as the one possession is more valuable than the other.” The story to which Prof. Silliman gave currency in his Travels, of Hume, converting his mother to infidelity, and his being overwhelmed with anguish on her dying hopeless and full of reproaches against him, is disproved in this work by dates and testimony; and the remark “is made that this foolish and improbable story, told, we may suppose after dinner, and invented on the spot, was at variance with Hume’s whole character.” Probably the foundation of the story was the Hon. Mr. Boyle’s saying to Hume on seeing him in deep affliction at his mother’s death, “My friend, you own this uncommon grief to having thrown off the principles of religion; for if you had not, you would have been consoled with the firm belief that the good lady, who was not only the best of mothers, but the most pious of Christians, is completely happy in the realms of the just.” To this, Hume replied, “Though I throw out my speculations to entertain the learned and metaphysical world, yet, in other things I do not think so differently from the rest of the world as you imagine.”
Lord Charlmont [sic] testifies that he never say Hume as much displeased as by the conceited petulance of Mrs. Mallet. Though unacquainted with Hume, on meeting him one night at an assembly, she boldly accosted him in these words, “Mr. Hume, give me leave to introduce myself to you; we Deists ought to know each other.” “Madam,” replied he, “I am no Deist; I do not style myself so, neither do I desire to be known by that appellation.”
He was not Parcus deorum cultor et infrequences, as might have been expected. He was fond of the preaching of Dr. Robertson, and not averse to that of his opponent, the evangelical Erskine. Even in France he attended the ambassador’s chapel, and casually mentions in a letter home not having seen some one in church, in a manner to imply that he was there himself. He provided seats for all his domestics, and if they absented themselves, would inquire of them seriously the reason.
Hume was of a different spirit from such unbelievers as Voltaire. Their inquiries were often on the same subjects in natural theology, and the arguments may be similar, but the tone of the English sceptic is grave and respectful, while the French mocker gibes and jeers with ribald jests at all that is venerable and sacred.
Hume was certainly no Atheist. Even amid the philosophical and brilliant circles of Parisian anti-religionists, with whom so much of his life was passed, he never gave in to the fashionable renunciation of a Deity, but boldly professed what he believed. Much as his genial temper and ready wit disposed him to enjoy the social ease and polished learning of those circles, he disliked their scornful infidelity and intolerance of all earnestness in belief. “I will tell you an anecdote of Hume,” said Diderot to Sir Samuel Romilly, “but it may scandalize you somewhat, for you English believe a little in God: we don’t at all. He was dining with a party at Baron d’Holbach’s. Sitting next to the Baron, they conversed on natural religion. ‘As for atheists,’ said Hume, ‘I don’t believe they exist; I never saw one.’ ‘You have been a little unfortunate,’ replied the other, ‘you are sitting at table with seventeen for the first time.’” The tone of his feelings sometimes rose almost to enthusiasm on this subject; and they seldom did on any. His friend Adam Ferguson relates, that walking home together one clear and beautiful night, Hume suddenly stopped, looked up to the starry sky and exclaimed in a manner worthy of Hervey’s Meditations, “Oh, Adam, can any one contemplate the wonders of that firmament, and not believe that there is a God?” One ground of his memorable friendship with Rousseau was sympathy on this point. He complains in a letter to Dr. Blair, of the French atheists being intolerant to the enthusiastic theist. “They are displeased with him because they think he ever-abounds in religion; and it is indeed remarkable that the philosopher of this age who has been most persecuted, is by far the most devout. I do not include such philosophers as are invested with the sacerdotal character. I am, dear doctor, yours usque ad aras.”
Hume’s reasoning about miracles, which has produced so much indignation and clamor, after all agrees very well with much of the declamation of ultra-Evangelicals. The disclaimers of reason as a blind, useless and perhaps pernicious guide in religion should not complain of Hume’s severing reason from religion. It should seem the act of a friend to rescue Christianity from a treacherous companion — “non talibus defensoribus eget.” They believe that religion is too sacred to be allied with a poor miserable stumbler like man’s erring reason. “Our most holy religion,” says he, and say they, “is founded on faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is by no means fitted to endure.” Hume is no advocate for us who deny that reason and revelation are two disconnected things; that each must act alone, and that the one derives no aid from the other. He is the patron of the Orthodox. And whatever he or they may say, we can believe from reasoning both that a miracle is possible, and that faith in it is possible in the natural exercise of our minds; and if Campbell’s refutation of his sophistry is not sufficient for us, Geology is. Geology shows to our eyes that such “impossible” deviations from the established order of nature have taken place.
Hume grieved in his old age at the publication of his Essays and softened the offensive terms in which he had spoken of religionists in the early editions of his History. He says in his description of his own character, that “plain as his manners were, and apparently careless of attention, vanity was his predominant weakness. That vanity led him to publish his Essays — which he grieved over; not that he had changed his opinions, but that he thought he had injured society by disseminating them.”
Yes, vanity was his foible, and we cannot blame it harshly when we consider that no one ever was more flattered. Abroad even more than at home he was an idol. In the glittering saloons of Paris nobles and beauties worshipped him. At court kings and princes did him homage. “Do you ask me about my course of life?” he writes. “I can only say, that I eat nothing but ambrosia, drink nothing but nectar, breathe nothing but incense, and tread on nothing but flowers! Every man I meet, and still more every lady, would think they were wanting in the most indispensable duty, if they did not make a long and elaborate harangue in my praise. What happened last week, when I had the honour of being presented to the Dauphin’s children at Versailles, is one of the most curious scenes I have yet passed through. The Duc de Berri, 10 years old, stepped forth and told me how many friends and admirers I had in this country, and that he reckoned himself in the number, from the pleasure he had received from the reading of many passages in my works. When he had finished, his brother, the Count de Provence, who is two years younger, began his discourse, and informed me that I had been long and impatiently expected in France; and that he himself expected soon to have great satisfaction from the reading of my fine History. But what is more curious, when I was carried thence to the Count d’Artoise, who is but four years of age, I heard him mumble something, which, though he had forgot it in the way, I conjectured from some scattered words, to have been also a panegyric dictated to him.”
After all we must blame “le bon David,” good fellow as he was in all the social relations, for scattering fire brands, arrows and death, and saying, am I not in sport? But he was a saint amidst the benighted pagans among whom he lived in Paris, and of whom he wickedly gives the Rev. Dr. Blair the following satisfactory account. “The men of letters here are really very agreeable; all of them men of the world, living in entire, or almost entire harmony among themselves, and quite irreproachable in their morals. It would give you and Jardine and Robertson, great satisfaction to find that there is not a single deist among them.”
H. G. E.